Saturday, 16 April 2011

Decorative Letters Tutorial

I have always looked at those lovely wooden decorative letters and thought how lovely it would be to have the word "LOVE" above my headboard, (wow, how many times can I use the word "love" in one sentence?) however I have never been able to justify the cost. So I, being both thrifty and crafty (even thought I do say so myself) decided that I could quite easily make some given a bit of time and the right materials. So now I have these lovely words on my bed head and I wanted to share how I made them with you, I made these over several days but would say that they do take a good 6 or 7 hours to complete from start to finish:

1. First gather together your materials:

Corrugated card board,

masking tape,

gummed tape,

pencil,

ruler,

craft knife,

cutting mat,

watered down PVA glue,

tissue paper,

paint brush,

white emulsion,

2. Draw the design for your letters to the required height and width. I used the Font Times New Roman as a guide. If you are worried about drawing these letters free hand you could quite easily print them off and use the printout as a guide.

3. Next cut round all your letters with a craft knife, use a ruler and cutting mat for safety and accuracy. Keep the craft knife upright so that all your edges are 90 degrees. *Health and safety - always keep your hand behind the cutting blade!*

4. Now draw out another set of letters using the first set as a template, cut them out as before, you now have two of each letter, 8 in total:

5. Next you need to cut the edge pieces for each letter, this part is a little time consuming, if you are sensible and do things systematically then you could measure all your edges and draw them out accurately before cutting them, I am not sensible so I did all my edges by rack of eye!

6. Assemble your letters using masking tape the hold the pieces in place, if you are like me then this is where you realise you haven't done all your edges and you have to go back and make more, doh!

7. Get your gummed tape and cut it down the middle, then into lots of small pieces about 2-3 inches long,

8. Wet the paper with a damp sponge and wrap over the edges of the letters, cover the letters totally in gummed paper,

9. The "O" is the trickiest letter to do, I stacked some small pieces of card in between the front and back of the "O" to compensate for the lack of edges,

10. Split the tape in half again to make smaller strips to wrap around the edges of the "O", then cover these with another strip, carefully layering the gummed paper to create as smooth a surface as possible,

They should now look like this:

11. Now you need to cover the letters with tissue paper to give them an even surface texture. Paste watered down PVA glue onto the letter and paste more PVA over the top, dabbing the brush so the tissue paper scrunches up a bit,

12. Leave them to dry then begin painting with white emulsion,

Leave to dry again, then enjoy the fruits of your labour:

Hope you like, send me your pics if you have a go, I would love to see them.

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The smell of freshley baked bread, the sound of a baby laughing. the feel of spring rain on my skin, the sight of a sprouting seed, everything that is beautiful, everything that is lovely, everything that is good.